24. Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Four
Mia looks up when I step through the shop door.
“You good?” She looks like she’s asking against her will. Her mood is back.
I want to work this out with her. But I’m so tired right now with a dozen other problems to solve first.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Need to figure out a place to stay tonight.”
She holds up her phone. “I found a motel that will take us if we pay cash. Randy says he’ll drop us off on his way home.”
Randy nods from behind the desk. “I’d like to get going soon. Wednesdays the wife cooks meatloaf.”
“Where’s Gabe?” I ask.
“Getting our stuff out of the Jeep.”
We go out to help him, and Randy directs us to a Chevy pickup parked behind the garage. “Load in while I lock up the shop.”
We lug over our stuff, and I toss my stupid pink suitcase in the truck bed. A few minutes later we’re on the road, heading farther into Coffee Creek. Randy says the E-Z Sleep Motel is on the other end of town, but it won’t take long to get there.
We pull up to the motel a few minutes later. It’s a squat single-story building with a tiny office and ten orange doors facing the road. All the rooms have drawn blinds in their windows, at least half of them missing a slat or two. The E-Z Sleep sign is dusty black letters on a faded red background, and I doubt the neon letters work. Every bad movie cliché lives in this single, rundown building.
Randy puts the truck in park. “You guys going to be all right here?”
Gabe turns around to look at us, and Mia and I exchange glances. The doubt in Randy’s voice doesn’t inspire any confidence, but we don’t have options. I say, “Sure.”
“I’ll work on your Jeep first thing in the morning and give you a call when you can drive her,” he says. “It’s going to take at least a day and a half. Could get to it sooner if I didn’t have to wait on the radiator.”
“My . . . friend is going to see if she can track down a part and get it here faster. She works for a body shop.”
“All right. Have her keep me in the loop.” He rolls down his window and studies the office. “Go make sure someone’s in there. My friend Dee used to own this place, but she sold it last year, and I don’t know much about the new management.”
Someone bought this? Only two doors have cars parked in front of them, an old Jetta and a small U-Haul truck.
“I’ll go pay,” I say. I poke my head through the door of the closet-sized office, and a woman as faded as the sign looks up from a clunky old computer.
“Help you?”
I lean back out and give Randy a thumbs-up. Gabe and Mia climb out to unload our stuff. I step all the way in. “We called and talked to you earlier about paying cash for a room?”
She nods and holds out one hand while she reaches into a drawer with the other. “Cash, please.”
I dig out fifty bucks and wonder if the inside of the rooms is any better than the outside. I don’t hand over the money. “Can I see the room first?” I don’t know why I ask. It’s not like we have other choices.
She hands me a key, not the plastic kind, a real one, the brass tarnished and grimy. “Suit yourself. Room six. But if you aren’t back with the key or the money in five minutes, I’m calling someone to get one or the other from you, and you’ll only wish it was the sheriff.”
“I understand.” I take the key and walk out to Mia and Gabe. Randy’s truck is gone. “Room six.”
Our suitcases rattle over the busted concrete walkway. Only half the doors have numbers, but I stop at the sixth one. The paint where the room number used to hang shows the outline of a “6” darker than the peeling paint around it.
“I want to go to the clown motel,” Mia says.
“Is it too late to hitchhike to Death Valley?” Gabe asks. “Seems like a better option than the murder motel.”
“Here we go,” Mia says when I slide the key into the lock. They crowd around me to peer inside.
“Oh, hell no,” the Sandovals say together.
I can’t argue.
Two beds fill the cramped room, one slightly sunken in the middle. Gabe reaches past me to flip a switch, and a wall sconce between the beds flickers enough for us to see the bulbless light fixture next to it hanging askew from an exposed wire. It reeks of cigarette smoke.
“I can fix this,” I say.
“With a wrecking ball, maybe,” Gabe says.
“No, I mean this whole situation.” I don’t know how, but I know for sure we can’t stay here. “Give me a minute.” I return the key to the clerk and keep my cash. Then I google like my life depends on it, because if our only option is that room, it might.
I try “how to get free hotel rooms” and “where to crash for free.” Eventually, I find a site for couch surfers. Hosts aren’t allowed to charge. Gabe will hate this, but it has to be better than the murder motel.
The nearest place is twenty miles farther west, but I send a message through the site explaining our situation and give the host my cell number, then turn to Gabe and Mia, who are sitting on their duffel bags, waiting.
“We’re going to couch surf,” I tell them.
“No.” Gabe doesn’t even hesitate.
“Hear me out,” I say. “There’s a couch-surfing site that reviews the hosts. I found a place twenty miles out of town that has over a hundred reviews, all of them good, all of them saying how sweet the owner is. It’s that or hang out in the E-Z Sleep Motel parking lot and hope nothing bad happens to us.”
“Still no.”
My phone buzzes with an incoming text. This is Jean from Couchsurf. Is this Kendall?
I confirm that it is and immediately get a call from the same number.
“Hello?” I put her on speaker.
“Hello. This is Jean from Highpoint Farms. Is this Kendall, the weary traveler?”
“Um, yes? And my two friends.”
“Hello, friends.” Her voice sounds older and warm. It makes me think of chamomile tea. “Sorry to hear about your car trouble. Where are you stuck?”
“Coffee Creek. We’re in the parking lot of the E-Z Sleep Motel.”
A low whistle. “I’ll send out Paul right away. Sit tight. Don’t talk to anyone there if you can help it.” She hangs up after a description of Paul’s Ford, another warning not to talk to anyone at the motel, and another warm goodbye.
“You can refuse to couch surf if you want,” Mia tells Gabe, “but I’m not staying at this place a minute longer than I have to.”
Gabe scrubs his hands over his face. “Let me see the site,” he says. I hand him the phone and after scrolling for a solid five minutes, he hands it back with a grimace. “Okay.”
“Okay, you’ll go to Jean’s?” I ask.
“Okay, this is a bad idea, but it’s the least bad of our options.”
“It’ll be great, you’ll see.”
Forty-five minutes later, a battered red Explorer pulls into the parking lot. A magnetic sign sticks to the door with “Highpoint Farms” spelled out and decorated in cute ivy flourishes. A middle-aged guy climbs down from the cab. “Kendall?”
“That’s me.” I stand to shake his hand. “Are you Paul?”
“Yep.” He lifts his baseball cap and scratches his shaggy blond hair. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but how old are you?”
“Eighteen,” I lie, as Gabe rises to stand beside me. Is he looming? He’s so close. Definitely looks like looming.
Paul’s eyebrows go up like he doesn’t believe me. He studies each of us for a few seconds, sighs, and mumbles something like, “Not my problem,” then louder, “Welp, get in.”
We stow our suitcases in the back and Gabe calls shotgun. Mia and I clamber into the middle row.
“Thanks for coming to get us. How far is it to the farm?” I ask over the growl of the engine as he pulls onto the highway.
“Be about thirty minutes.”
That’s a long drive with a stranger. But I have Gabe and Mia with me, so we’ve got the numbers on our side. I focus on the warmth I heard in Jean’s voice and try to project a sense of calm as I say, “It was nice of you to come get us.”
He gives something between a grunt and a laugh at this, but whatever the sound is, it doesn’t leave room for follow-up questions. I fall quiet and watch the scenery. Low, brown hills stretch along either side of the road.
After about twenty minutes, Gabe straightens suddenly, leans slightly forward, then jerks his head around to shoot me a withering glare.
“What?” I ask.
He shakes his head and faces forward again. Within a couple of minutes, we turn off the main road and pass under a cheerfully painted sign announcing we’ve arrived at Highpoint Farms. We’re greeted with greenhouses as far as the eye can see.
As we crunch up the driveway toward the sturdy white farmhouse, the screen door opens and a tall, lean woman of about sixty steps onto the porch with a smile. As soon as we climb out of the truck, it fades.
“Uh oh,” she says. She shoots Paul a look of consternation. “They’re kids.”
“None of my business,” Paul says as he climbs down from the truck. “You said to pick them up, I picked them up. I’ll be in greenhouse three.” He lopes off, Jean glaring after him.
What is the big deal? Wouldn’t she be even more likely to help us, given our age?
She turns her attention to us. “Never crossed my mind I’d be dealing with teenagers.”
“Dealing” sounds much less promising than “hosting.”
“Is there a problem?” Mia asks.
“I think I know why this is called Highpoint,” Gabe says.
And then the smell of skunk hits me. I’ve been smelling it faintly for a mile, but I assumed it was roadkill somewhere along the way, the odor getting into the Ford’s ventilation system. “This is a weed farm.” Now I understand Gabe’s look in the car.
“A cannabis grow,” Jean corrects. She nods at the sign on the truck door. “What did you think those leaves were?”
I squint and groan. “I thought those were ivy leaves. I thought it was cute for a farm.”
Jean snorts. “Ivy is the last thing you want growing on a farm. Cannabis, however . . .”
“So all those greenhouses . . .” Mia’s voice trails up, making it a question.
“All sativa,” Jean confirms.
“That’s a kind of weed,” Gabe says.
“I know that,” Mia snaps.
“ How do you know that?” he demands.
Now isn’t the time for a Sandoval argument, so I step in. “Who doesn’t know that?”
“Maybe the girl who thought those were ivy leaves,” he points out.
I wave him away in a shush gesture. “You didn’t notice either. It’s fine. This is a legit operation, not a bunch of dudes with rifles looking for drug mules.” I muster a smile for Jean. “Thanks for putting us up. We were in a bind.”
She’s shaking her head before I finish speaking. “It’s not that easy,” she said. “I’m happy to help, but you can’t be on this property until you’re twenty-one or I lose my license to grow.”
“Oh.”
It’s quiet for a minute. Then Mia says softly, “I don’t want to go back to the murder motel.”
Jean finally laughs. “Good name.”
I don’t know what to do here, but I feel no surprise that I have managed to take our situation from bad to worse. The only thing I’ve done right on this trip is find us good tacos. So far, it’s Kendall – 1, bad luck – 50,000,000.
I have to figure this out.
We can . . .
We should . . .
Maybe if . . .
I clear my throat and ignore the daggers Gabe is shooting from his eyes. “Jean, do you have any ideas that don’t involve the murder motel?” There’s a tiny crack in the last word even though I try so hard to stay steady.
She sighs. “Let me make a phone call,” she says, going back into the house.
“I can’t bel—” Gabe starts but I cut him off.
“Don’t. I don’t want to hear it.”
He shuts his mouth, but a minute later it twitches.
Mia glares. “It’s not funny.”
“It’s not?” he asks. “Kendall has dragged us into the middle of every Boulderite’s dream come true. I don’t mess with weed at school, but now I’m in the middle of a pot farm.”
“Cannabis grow,” I correct him, but the absurdity of the situation makes me snort.
Mia’s scowl slowly slips into a grin, and by the time Jean emerges from the house, we’re all laughing.
“You definitely can’t stand around here giggling like that,” Jean says. “Anyone from the county drops by, they’ll think I let you sample the product.”
That only makes us laugh harder, and Jean’s lip quirks. She waits us out and says, “I found you somewhere to stay. My friend Orrin lives another few miles up the road, and if you don’t mind bunking on his floor, he and his wife will put you up until tomorrow. Paul will get you in the morning and run you back to Coffee Creek.”
“Really?” Mia says. “No murder motel?”
“Thank you, Jean.” I want to fling myself on her in a hug, but she doesn’t seem the type. No sooner do I decide not to invade Jean’s space than Mia’s got her arms around the older woman’s neck, muttering “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Jean gives her shoulder an awkward pat, and Gabe has to draw Mia away to free Jean.
“Sorry,” he says.
“Don’t worry about it,” Jean tells him. “I’d feel that way if I escaped that motel too. I wouldn’t send my ex-mother-in-law there, and I can’t stand the old hag.”
She calls Paul back from the greenhouses and tells him the new plan.
I can only hope this is not one of those things where we’re hopping out of the frying pan into the fire. This place has to be better than the murder motel and more legal than a pot farm.
Right?